Axion: Brexit could drive UK circular economy

Brexit offers fresh opportunities for the UK and its manufacturers to secure their raw materials, such as recycled plastics, from a stable domestic market and to stimulate a circular flow of materials, according to Axion Polymers.

The UK plastics
recycler suggests that potential difficulties in transporting material across
borders after 29 March 2019 should become a driver for growth in the domestic
market as purchasers seek to reduce risk from an inward material supply chain.

Director
Roger Morton says freedom from regulatory controls and external policies,
coupled with the UK’s ability to set its own rules, could encourage greater
investment and enable the UK to ‘get ahead of the rest of Europe’ in material
recovery and resource security – provided there is strong Government
leadership.

Axion
produces high-grade recycled polymers derived from end-of-life vehicles at two
sites in Manchester. Plastics are extracted from end-of-life cars and other
metal scrap at its SWAPP facility in Trafford Park and further refined at
Salford, where recent laboratory equipment investment is further enhancing the
products’ properties and quality.

Good news

Mark
Keenan, Axion Polymers Business development manager says: ‘With 31.5 million
cars currently on UK roads, our future end-of-life vehicle feedstock for our
recycled polymers is assured. This can only be good news for UK companies
seeking to use locally-sourced plastic raw materials that can go back into a
range of products, from new cars and electrical equipment to construction
products.’

‘Brexit is
inevitable,’ Morton insists. ‘Although complications could arise, we are taking
a positive approach. British companies should focus on the opportunity that
leaving the EU offers and how we can make the most of our resource-sustainable
position.’

Investment boost

A good
example, he points out, is steel. With annual consumption of 12 million tonnes
versus annual arisings of 11.5 million tonnes, he believes this market could be
much more circular than the existing model of exporting scrap and importing
finished products. Similarly, greater demand for the use of recycled polymers
in new automotive, electrical and building products could encourage further
investment in more processing plants such as Axion’s.

While quality
controls such as REACH regulations and other standards should remain ‘mirrored
with Europe’, Morton suggests there could be an opportunity to take the lead ‘by
designing and implementing a set of regulatory measures that drive the
transition to a circular economy here’.

Such
measures could involve modulated producer responsibility obligations for brands
that make the effort to change to recyclable designs and/or utilise high levels
of recycled content. ‘This would require vision and a brave government with
strong leadership. But in an uncertain world, what’s certain is that material
would be available in the UK for use in the UK,’ he says.

Shortage of capacity

According
to the Axion director, one of the long-term benefits of Brexit should be an end
to the mass exports of waste plastic packaging and electronics, and the start
of investment in a recycling infrastructure in the UK as an ‘environmental
goal’. While 63% of collected UK plastic packaging resources is currently
exported, the country is short of around 10 to 15 large-scale recycling plants
to handle that volume, he adds.

Nor is
there, he argues, sufficient energy-from-waste capacity to handle the low-grade
reject plastic stream produced by recyclers – around 50% of their waste in-feed
tonnage. Strategic government thinking and stable long-term policy measures and
clear goals for the five to ten years’ will be needed to drive this change.

Opportunities

Morton suggests
there is an opportunity for the UK Government to drive the development of
demonstration and pilot plants when the UK is free of state aid regulations
that prevent preferential treatment.

‘UK
businesses need to wake up to these future possibilities and start talking to
suppliers like us that can offer a secure supply of material. It’s competitive
on price and performs to the same standard as virgin material,’ he maintains.

Axion has
seen an increase in enquiries in recent months and there is considerable
interest from UK manufacturers in what the company can offer. ‘Despite current
uncertainty around Brexit, we remain upbeat about the opportunities to trigger
more material moving within the circular economy in the UK,’ says Morton.

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